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Slice of Life (Day 13): This Dictionary Endures

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

I was doing some cleaning through boxes of “stuff” and came across an old Mini-Disc. The label told us that it was our youngest son’s first birthday celebration — 11 1/2 years ago! Of course, we popped the disc into our DVD player, and wondered if it would play a Mini-Disc (they look like shrunk-down versions of DVDs).

After a few minutes of the player deciding just what the heck this thing was, it did start to play.

Boy, what fun it was to watch with him as his younger self, with his younger older brothers hovering around him, devoured brownies and ice cream, and then played with the wrapping paper on gifts, instead of the gifts themselves, as our old dog, Bella, paced around him and the other two boys in protective mode.

“Hey,” he shouted, pointing at the screen. “That dictionary. We still have that dictionary!”

We froze the screen and looked. Sure enough, the very same dictionary — a DK kids edition with a blue cover that has been everything from a source for looking up words to stages for Lego play to ramps for Hot Wheels — was sitting on the floor, just as it was in the video from more than a decade ago.

We all laughed. It’s not that the dictionary gets all that much use these days, but that little book of words and definitions seems to have remained in our family’s orbit for all that time (and maybe even longer, as I think it was given to our older son when he was a toddler).

Funny that you write about this. I have two dictionaries that come to mind. We still have the dictionary I had in ES school. I held onto it, had it in my classroom, and it has come home again to my daughter’s room. The other is a monster of a dictionary that I came in contact by way of marriage. My husband loves this monstrosity. Every time we move about the world I question the need to lug the thing with us. I have finally relented. Why? It is thick enough, probably 8 inches, that I use it as a ‘booster’ for our tabletop massage cradle. Thanks for sharing that we aren’t the only ones with dictionary memories.